Normandale
Community College
Creative
Writing Portfolio
Lisa
Dominique Ronan
Introduction
to Creative Writing
Thomas
Maltman
March
22nd, 2016
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Note ............................................................................................................... 3
Poems
January 2007.................................................................................................... 4
On the Spanish
Steps....................................................................................... 5
A Widow Waiting
by the Water...................................................................... 7
Coming Home In
the Evening......................................................................... 8
Essay
Going by
Train................................................................................................... 10
NOTE
In all cases of poetry and essay I have
tried to add sensory detail and have compacted or eliminated narrative
description or kept it to a necessary minimum.
I have changed titles, except for 'At Home in the Evening,' in an effort
to experiment with titles that give some information about the text. In the poem 'January 2007' I added a stanza
and combined the last two stanzas by cutting out narrative and description of
my feelings, keeping the focus on describing my memory of my mother. I did not
change the poem 'A Widow Waiting by the Water' after the revision that I
emailed but would like to work on 'rendering swollen bodies.... waste to
lives'. In 'On the Spanish Steps' I
condensed the narrative and eliminated some wordiness. The essay 'Going by Train' sees a scene added
and I have added sensory detail in several places. I adjusted the paragraph about sleeping at
the Paris train station and tried to separate the comparison with the Grand
Canyon. I briefly added insight about my thoughts on travelling.
Through this course I have been
surprised see my production of poetry. I
enjoy short story writing and had not considered poetry much, but see that I
can tell a story with different means through poetry. I am very aware now that I use sensory imagery
at times and then drift off into general or abstract writing. I look forward to improving that.
Playwriting will challenge me to find a
controversial position to present as a focus to the story. I am excited to start short fiction. I enjoy stories and storytelling but find I
need to be pushed into a topic before I come up with a focus. I would like to work on finding inspiration
and focus on my own for stories, or poems and plays for that matter. I find that I sometimes get an inspiring
beginning and then am not sure which is the most exciting way to take it or it
becomes too abstract.
I would like to learn more self guiding
in my writing, to be able to notice the weak spots in my writing. I am looking forward to contributing to the
writing contest at Normandale and to learning about submitting for future use
as well as the end chapter in our text book about getting published.
January 2007
My mother's purse
rests on the fireplace. As if she has just
gone out to get the mail. Droplets of
water form on the windowpanes,
unshovelled snow lies outside.
She will walk in through the door, smiling.
Say she forgot her keys, pick up her black bag by
the straps,
check for change in her billfold and,
fastening the round button at the neck of her red
coat,
hurry out into the January wind.
I wait. Time
out paces me, unyielding,
while I haltingly take in the loss.
Stunned that I can no longer make amends to her for
my lacking.
Willing to bargain with God, beg for one small
exception.
So she could stay a while longer.
On the Spanish
Steps
I saw her
on the Spanish Steps asking for money,
while the
February sun shone bright and warm.
She came
at me with a smile, I skirted wide around her.
Sneaky
smiling like that, I thought.
If she
returns home without sufficient money will she be beaten?
Round
faced and so small that she looked like a child.
I would
rather watch the ancient white fountains
spraying
in the square than contemplate
her fate.
A wad of
paper bills saved for a sweet perfume that I had not wor n in years.
I suddenly
desired to smell the honeyed aroma on my
wrists,
to make
myself special to no one else if not me.
The oily
scent rubbed warm on my skin would transform me,
make me
more worthwhile, to whom and why
I could
not say.
I find her
on the doorstep of the shop emanating
vanilla and sandalwood,
my long
saved treasure in hand and a tiny bit for lunch
to
celebrate myself all at once.
She has forgotten me, already moved on to the next stranger,
but the
perfume conquers me no more, nor am I hungry for my little lunch.
I will not
give her my petty cash, nor will I spend it on myself.
I will
keep it for another day, for something that I desire intensely
like the
sweet smell of orange blossoms and musk to anoint my arms.
Now she
has forced herself into my mind and
there is
no more room for me.
A Widow Waiting by the Water
She sits on slate grey rocks,
inert, suspended and prayerless.
Silently watching the sapphire Mediterranean sea
that has become a graveyard.
Rendering swollen bodies, swallowing hope, laying
waste to lives.
A kiss lies ready on her lips for him and her child.
The moment they embarked the
dilapidated carcass set recklessly adrift,
a ceaseless memory that clouds the days and years
pounding in her head, begging to be released.
Numbly clinging to it
and the moment when they held hands,
sliding weak and
exhausted from hers,
despite her pleas.
Leaving her abandoned in the
biting, black waves,
waiting and wish-less,
with no one to call
her own.
At Home In The Evening
She tripped in the door, grocery
bag in hand.
From the sofa the gingerbread man
turned his rigid silhouette angled at the doorway.
Looking askance, he gestured for
her to sit next to him
on the seat of pins and needles.
The smell of dinner burning came
from the kitchen.
'I'll clean that up in two shakes
of a lamb's tail'
-her grandmother said things like
that -
and off she went.
The gingerbread
man didn't like her doing that.
He offered her the remote control,
she could push the buttons and everything.
But off she ran to clean up the burnt soup.
She sure had a mind of her own.
When she came back the gingerbread
man
had an upside down smile and one of
his black currant eyes had fallen off.
He looked lopsided and queer and
sinister.
He offered her the seat of pins and
needles.
Again.
The remote control and the i-pad
were on the other seat so
she had no choice.
'Kiss me,' he said.
She contemplated the upside down
smile; muddy pink frosting that
would stay like grit in her mouth.
'Better go check the washer,' she
said and dashed away.
The gingerbread man complained that
she always had something better to do.
With one black current eye, brown
stumpy arms crossed,
he looked at the t.v. and
pushed the buttons on the remote
control.
What a life, spent sitting in front
of a television, she thought.
Sooner or later the other black
current eye will fall off,
then the sugar buttons will go.
Before you know it he will be good
only to be put outside for the birds to eat.
Maybe that's not such a bad
idea.
She nearly smiled.
Just in case, before going back to
the living room,
she stopped in to see if she could
help with homework.
Going
by Train
At
18 I flew to Paris, took a train to the South of France bringing my
disassembled blue race bicycle in an enormous box, nearly abandoning it at the
top of the stairway in the Gare du Nord because I could not carry the large suitcase
and huge bicycle box up and down the stairs to the train platforms. There are
no elevators in the stations in France or Italy, or anywhere else for all I
know, but definitely not in France that day in July. All summer I rode the train back and forth
from a tiny hamlet outside Draguignan where I stayed, to the white beaches in
Cap d'Antibes, the town that Picasso once lived in and painted, Nice, San
Raphael, or glamourous St. Maxime. But
the place I loved the most was Eze Bord su Mer.
As its name implies, Eze is along the edge of the water and the small
town attracted no tourists, the beach was empty, except for me. I sat on the
beachin Eze, leaning against my backpack watching the waves roll out of the
sparkling Mediterranean while I read, trains passing overhead on a personal
bridge of tracks, carrying passengers back and forth from Nice to Villefranche,
Menton, the ancient fisherman's village, or Italy or whichever small town lie
in between. That summer the newspapers carried a story about a girl
disappearing from the beach there, presumably kidnapped and sold into sex
trafficking. Not even that would shatter my fascination with the world.
The following summer I travelled with my
younger brother. Again by train, to
Ireland and London, first by train then boat to go over the English
Channel. We boarded rickety trains
through Innsbruck and Switzerland and trekked to hostels in forgotten corners
of Germany. One hostel was a castle on the hill, reached by dint of train then
bus and required walking up a steep hill with loaded backpacks. The astonishing view of the valley below was
well worth the exhausting pilgrimage. As the cities in Germany became one
indistinct blur we stayed at another hostel that invited the inhabitants to
exit at 7am, the doors then locked until evening. I discovered that summer that
Germans have their points of reference and saying 'Rouse, rouse!' at 6:30am to
sleeping teenage backpackers slumbering in their youth hostels is one of the
more substantial ones. My crowning
achievement that year though, was sleeping at Paris train station with my 16
year old brother because we missed the last train. Fearful of a lecture, I never told my parents.
That experience has become the measure against which we evaluate the
unsavoriness of a situation. Much later, as adults, a family vacation saw my
brother, me and our two families as well as our aging father, strapped in
saddles aboard stubborn, lurching mules descending awkwardly on narrow 6 inch
paths into the Grand Canyon. A spectacular
view and a dangerously sharp drop down the canyon side. Each time one over our
oversized mules noisily hit a rock causing it to clamor down the canyon, I
winced and turned to count that there were nine in our group. My brother and I looked at each other, as we
often do and silently evaluated how it compared in danger with sleeping at the
train station in Paris. We cringe at the
memory of how we put ourselves in danger's ugly fist that night, taking turns
sleeping and changing spots outside the filthy train station when drug addicts
or sellers got too close. Our objective was to survive from around midnight
until the first train early the next morning.
The specifics of train schedule elude me but hunching over our green backpacks,
foreheads resting on our arms and taking turns closing our eyes, never sleeping
is impressed in my mind. I wonder why we
took such risks and why we continue to travel.
I am unsure where the allure for such endeavors come from and asked my
brother, 'Why do we do it at all?' He responded, 'Isn't that just what you do?'
'Yes,' I thought. I could not imagine
life without travelling, whether on noisy trains as a teen, kayaking in the
milky waters of the Gorges du Verdun in France or watching the volcano in
Stromboli erupt from a row boat in the water at night, I truly cannot.
The
pokiness of trains exasperated me, the lurching progress, bumpy ride shaking me
to my wits end. The new fast trains, Alta
velocità, travel at 182km/hour between Milan and Bologna. The trains slow to 78 km/hour because of the
mountainous terrain between Bologna and Florence, while lucky travelers from
Florence to Rome zip speedily by at 254 km/hour. The ride is smooth and quiet, often lulling
passengers to sleep. It whisks me through the familiar countryside taking me
from Milan to Florence in an hour and 40 minutes to escape monotony, see the
friends from the school where I taught English years before and other friends,
some now divorced or separated. The
bored, the divorced, the separated and the busy converge at a Balducci's in via Marconi for un'aperitivo
- before dinner drinks, which often turn into an extended drinking dinner
always cheerfully noisy and chatty and warm and friendly as are the
Italians. I listen to stories of
cheating mates, unpaid child support, laughing at anecdotes of potential love stories, I am introduced to
friends' husbands and current students of the school where I once taught. An attractive young man, nicely dressed, on
virtue of overhearing my name, introduces himself.
'Are
you Lisa?'
'Yes,'
I respond, surprised to be recognized by anyone in this din.
'Sono figlio
di Roberto.' -I am Roberto's
son.
I hesitate, recalling the name Roberto,
one of five brothers. Andrea was married
to my then-fiancè's twin sister. Roberto, his brother, lived next door to me
and my fiancè. A reel of images goes
through my mind of the 15 years since I have moved from Florence to Milan. Roberto's son, Nicolò Ruby, was four when I
left. I take in air with surprise, I am
moved to see Nicolò a man and touch his cheek as if he were still a child.
'O, mio Dio!'
'You were a child.' I say unbelievingly.
'Mi ricordo il tuo viso.' I
remember your face, he says
I smile and hold back a momentary burning in
my eyes. I tell him he has grown up to be handsome and wonder how his family
has fared. Remembering and seeing this child now a man is disorienting, like
being, on a cloud. Briefly, I feel like I am hovering above the street,
watching everyone.
Binario 21, track number 21 is
situated underground at the Milan train station. It is the track from which train cars
carrying mail were loaded and unloaded,
mail cars departed from here. It
is not accessible from the main station but from a street running parallel to
it: Via Ferrante Aporti. Between 1943
and 1945 deportees were loaded onto the cargo cars by means of kicking and
shoving from soldiers and began a journey which, for most, was one of no
return. Prisoners were loaded like
parcels on the cargo cars below ground and the entire windowless cargo cars
with 50 to 80 'passengers' were raised by elevators to the level of the station
where real passenger trains departed.
When the cars hooked up to the rest of the train convoy, a 7 day journey
directed to Italian concentration camps Fossoli and Bolzano or
Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen in Germany began. No one apparently noted
the unusual maneuvers. In December 1944 Bergen-Belsen held just over 15,000
prisoners. Josef Kramer, previously
commander at Auschwitz, became the new commander and four months later 60,000
prisoners were being held there. The camp was built to detain only 10,000.
Deaths in the camp rose from 7,000 in February 1945 to 18,000 a month later,
the dead bodies were burned in trenches.
There were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, the 50,000 POW's, Jews,
Czechs, Poles, homosexuals, Catholics and gypsies died of starvation, disease
and exposure. The expected period of
survival at Bergen-Belsen was 9 months.
It is where Anne Frank died. Over 20 convoys of prisoners left binario
21, not everyone arrived alive. On January 30, 1944 605 prisoners were
deported, 22 survived, among them men, women, children and elderly. The memorial has been left dimly lit to evoke
the original atmosphere. When a train starts its run, a disorienting loud noise
overwhelms everything for several frightening seconds.
